In this chapter, you will learn how to manage users in your Moodle system. We will first look at what information is stored for each user and how we can extend their profiles. We will then perform a number of standard user actions before dealing with cohorts. Finally, we will deal with a wide range of user authentication mechanisms before concluding the chapter with a best practice section. We will cover the following topics:
This is a lot to take in, so we'd better get going!
Other than guests, each user has a profile that contains information about them. We will first deal with the information that is stored for each user and how it is organized in Moodle.
You can view your own profile by selecting the Preferences item in the drop-down menu beside your name at the top of the screen. Click on the Edit profile link in the User account section to change your profile details. To modify the profiles of other users, click on the Edit icon beside their name by navigating to Users | Accounts | Browse list of users.
Moodle user profiles are divided into a number of categories, of which the first five cannot be changed via the Moodle user interface:
The following screenshot shows the profile fields of the General category:
Most of these items are self-explanatory, but there are a few things you need to know about each of them. Here is a brief description of each profile element, along with tips to use them effectively:
auth
method of the main admin account. We'll take a look at authentication methods in detail in the second half of this chapter.If Password policy is enabled (go to Security | Site policies), the password has to adhere to this policy.
For more details on password policy, refer to Chapter 11, Moodle Security and Privacy.
Additionally, a Description field is shown, which is used to provide additional information about the user. As an administrator, you can leave the field empty. However, when a user logs in to their profile, populating the field is compulsory.
A number of additional options might appear in the user's profile, for example, Preferred theme or Email charset, but this requires the settings to be changed elsewhere. We will mention these when the respective topics are being dealt with.
The second category is called User picture and, as the name suggests, it deals with the image attached to a user's profile.
To upload a new picture, simply drag it to the New picture pane or select the image from the file picker. The image cannot be larger than the maximum size that's listed (here, it's 2 MB) or it will not be uploaded. If your image is too large, it is recommended that you reduce its size to a minimum of 100 x 100 pixels. The formats that are supported are JPG and PNG; however, be careful with transparent backgrounds as they are not supported by older browsers.
The Picture description field is used as an alt tag, a description of the image, which is used for nonvisual browsers; it is in conformance with accessibility guidelines.
Once a picture has been assigned, it will be shown in place of the None label. To remove the picture, check the Delete checkbox, and the picture will be removed when the profile information is updated.
Moodle will automatically crop the image to a square and resize it to 100 x 100 pixels for the larger view and 35 x 35 pixels for the smaller, thumbnail view.
If you suspect that your learners are likely to misuse this feature by uploading unsuitable pictures, you can disable the functionality. Go to Security | Site policies and check the Disable user profile images checkbox. Bear in mind that once this feature is disabled, pictures cannot be assigned to any users (except the administrator), nor will it be possible for teachers to represent groups in courses with images.
This section comprises the following fields:
Interests, such as hobbies or professional activities, can be entered one by one. To remove a tag, select its label; to recover it again, select it from the pull-down menu. The given List of interests represents tags, which are used by Moodle activities, such as the Flickr, YouTube blocks, and for tagging blog entries. You can find more information on tagging at https://docs.moodle.org/en/Tags and in Chapter 9, Moodle Configuration.
More personal details are grouped under the Optional category:
Some organizations rename some of these fields to ones that are required in their setup. For more information on how to do this, refer to the Localization section in Chapter 9, Moodle Configuration.
Moodle allows new arbitrary fields to be added to the user profile. This feature can be found by navigating to Users | Accounts | User profile fields.
The profile fields are organized into categories (General, User picture, Interests, and Optional). Additional categories can be created and user-defined fields can then be placed within these new categories. A default category, called Other fields, is already present, which can be deleted or renamed via the standard Moodle icons. To create a new category, click on the Create a new profile category button:
You are asked to provide a unique category name. The category will be displayed at the bottom of the user profile once profile fields have been added to the category.
Once a category has been created, five types of profile fields can be added to Moodle via the Create a new profile field pull-down menu:
Once you have chosen your field type, you are taken to a settings screen for that field. It has two sections—Common settings deal with parameters that apply to all fields, and Specific settings contains parameters that apply only to the chosen field type.
The custom field can be given one of the following three visibility settings:
A Category has to be chosen from the list of added entries before the specific settings are shown for each field type. It is only possible to select newly created categories; default categories cannot, unfortunately, be selected. For example, if you wish to extend the existing address field with a ZIP code, you will have to do this in a separate category.
In addition to the common field settings, specific settings have to be provided for each profile field type:
Father
, Mother
, and Carer
) have been entered, with Mother
being the default value:If you wish to allow empty values, leave the first entry empty:
The Link field lets you create dynamic links, where $$
represents the parameter that will be replaced with the entered text. In the following screenshot, we have specified http://twitter.com/$$
. The transformed link will be shown in the user profile. Link target specifies where this link will be opened once it's selected:
Once all the required fields have been added, the order in which they will be displayed in the user profile can be changed by using the up and down arrows, as shown in the following screenshot:
These fields will now be shown in the user profile in the same way as the generic Moodle fields:
There are some more fields that technically belong to the user profile, but they have recently been moved to the User preferences section, which can be accessed via the drop-down menu besides the user icon in the toolbar. The reason why this has been done is that you can disallow users from editing their profile altogether (via the moodle/user:editownprofile
capability) and let them specify certain preferences via dedicated forms:
Preferences |
Description |
---|---|
E-mail digest type |
This setting determines how a user receives posts from forums to which a subscription exists. There are three possible choices, which are No digest (single e-mail per forum post) —which is the default, Complete (daily email with full posts), or Subjects (daily email with subjects only). |
Forum auto-subscribe |
This setting dictates whether a user is automatically subscribed to forums to which they post. |
Forum tracking |
If enabled, posts that have not yet been read will be highlighted, which improves forum usability. |
The default preferences of some settings (e-mail and forums) can be specified by navigating to Users | Accounts | User profile fields.
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